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“Were you always so somber? Always ready to turn on your lord at the nearest hint of a sweeter thing?”
Edrick remained in his sooty silence. Then, he did something altogether unexpected and broke out into laughter. It was a joyless sound totally at odds with the beautiful and bright day. “I was as loyal as a pup to its bitch. Then as loyal as a kicked dog to its master. I had risked my life for him.”
“And now?”
“I stayed by Rowan Dietrich through the worst of it, when hope and glory were naught. I remained loyal to Rowan Dietrich for over seven years. Now, he is someone else. He’s become a stranger. This war has turned him... and that girl, worst of all. It’s not the first young girl he’s turned.”
Huntley studied the man’s stony features. He watched as the rigid lines drew together, then visibly softened and showed something beneath. Not a full view, but just a peek.
Just enough.
The stone cracks again.
Huntley shook his head and turned to the sea, watching as a dolphin barreled through the waves. Absently, he reached inside his jerked and fumbled with the thimble he always kept near his heart.
“I imagine he was like a brother to you,” he finally said, keeping his eyes on the ocean. He knew it’d bother Edrick if he turned his stare toward him. “Standing by his side all those years. Watching him grieve the death of his wife... following him across battlefields, through defeat and triumph, high on a promise of vengeance and a better world for all of us. I reckon he was your brother, your best friend, your confidant. It couldn’t have been easy to watch him slip away, his entire purpose vanishing with him.”
He heard Edrick’s intake of breath. And then nothing else for several moments of quiet. “I trusted him. I helped raise him, fulfill his vengeance... but he couldn’t do the same.” Then, he added in a whispered afterthought, “Not for either of us.”
“Either of you?” The solemn knight said nothing. The ship’s deck creaked and moaned underfoot, sounding like a stirring beast. “I’ve never been the greatest fighter, the best at sums, healing, or even leading men into battle,” Huntley said. “Hell, my father always made sure I knew that well enough. Beat it into me. My strength is in people. Knowing them, speaking to them, understanding them. Making them happy. You being here, hundreds of miles from the Black Wolf, your brother by choice... it’s more than what you’ve said. It’s personal. It reeks of it.”
Edrick’s eyes hardened. “What’s it to you? You’re getting his secrets. And with them, you’ll buy back your little betrothed and her kingdom.”
“Aye,” he replied, unsheathing his dagger in a quick movement that sent Edrick back a step. “But at what price?”
And can I afford it?
“Personal, you say…” Edrick muttered as he stared out at the flat ocean that went on forever. “I never had a brother in Rowan, but I once had a son.”
That perked Huntley’s attention. He stilled his dagger mid-spin and turned to the weathered soldier. Edrick continued to stare into the horizon, which drank in the setting sun. Streams of red and orange spilled across the calm water, and a vibrant shaft of light divided the sky into two. They were alone on the deck. The soldiers were below and in the trailing fleet, probably eating or drinking or a little of both.
“You had a son, you say?” he asked.
“A smart lad, comely like his mother. But he ripped her open, coming into this world. The wet nurse handed me the boy as she lay dying. He started squalling, and before I could quiet him, Helene was gone. The last thing she heard was his bloody screams.”
“Where is he now? Your son?”
Edrick seemed not to hear him. He placed one of his hands on the railing and gripped it tight. The shimmering sun enhanced the deep lines on his face instead of softening them. It struck Huntley as unnatural.
“I hated him. I cursed him. He took her away—clawed out of her like a demon from hell.” Finally, he turned to him. Huntley felt a shiver at the black hatred he found in his eyes. “And that’s where he is now if God is good. Back in hell.”
They stood silently, watching the red sunlight spill across the water like blood. “Did you have any other children? Before she’d died. Or after?”
Edrick looked out to sea, his stone-hard features swathed in that red aura. “Like I’d said, Rowan could never do the same—for either of us.”
Then he left.
Huntley sighed and rested his wrists on the ship’s rail. Edrick had left him with more questions than answers. And the greatest one boomed inside his head, again and again. What price must I ultimately pay for Norland? And truly… can I afford it?
Twenty-Three
Rowan didn’t sleep that night. He was too swept up in emotion. Blanchette rested against the beat of his heart, which he found impossible to slow. He gazed down at her and watched as her lips parted. She exhaled dreamy breaths that stirred her golden hair.
Hours had passed, and he still couldn’t quite believe what had transpired between them. She’d come to life in his hands. Watching and feeling her respond to him, hearing her intense climax, had brought him more pleasure than his own.
He’d never felt such a powerful release… one that extended far beyond the physical. Even his fantasies couldn’t compare.
A flesh-and-blood angel, he thought with a smile, and with a bit of sin in her. A smattering of freckles peppered her turned-up nose; an endearing detail that made his heart ache a little more. The wound on her cheek had healed into a puckered ridge. It enhanced her beauty and reminded him of the warrior inside her—a soldier ready to fight and bleed for what she loved most. And it reminded him grimly of the horrors he’d brought down upon her. King Bartholomew, the queen, her brother… they were ghosts who’d never rest.
